Words

Words. Such a feeble form of communication. I can show you a picture of blowing snow. I can tell you how it bit and sliced and numbed. But can I make you feel it the way I feel it?


Words. So easily misread. Problem with a blog is exactly that. People read it. But what do they hear?
I can show you a picture of the bare tree and the puddle. I can tell you how the sky reflected and turned an ice-cold blue touched by tired dead trees. But can I make you feel it the way I feel it?

I can show you the movie "Supersize Me". I can tell you how gross it was and how I'll never eat a big Mac again. But can I make you feel the pain the way my stomach feels it, with undigested french fries revolting and burning? Neverending hunger.

Blowing snow

Took the kids up to Cypress yesterday afternoon (collecting their gear, getting them dressed up, getting all the stuff in the car and where is your left glove and don't bug your sister! ... :-) took only an hour), and halfway up the first chairlift (Sunrise) my daughter says "I'm cold cold cold I hate this I want to go home I wanna go HOME!!!!"
Got down, bought them snacks, got them warmed up, got the car, loaded everything in again, got the soppy cold stuff off, drove home, dropped my daughter off, got my son and me back in the car, got ourselves ready again, played in the snow, waited for the Eagle Express Chair to start working again... did one more run down Panorama with blowing snow biting our cheeks :-) Total cost $93 for lift plus $7 for snacks, total time spent 2pm-7pm, total runs 2.5, value priceless? :-)

It was lovely, it really was.

Twisted Logic Tour 2006

Main set (from Wikipedia)

1. "Square One"
2. "Politik"
3. "Yellow"
4. "God Put a Smile Upon Your Face"
5. "Speed of Sound"
6. "Low"
7. "A Rush of Blood to the Head"
8. "Everything's Not Lost" or "Amsterdam"
9. "White Shadows"
10. "The Scientist"
11. "'Til Kingdom Come (acoustic)"
12. "Ring of Fire (acoustic)" (Johnny Cash cover)
13. "Don't Panic (acoustic)" or "Green Eyes (acoustic)" (The crowd is given a choice between the two by the band)
14. "Clocks"
15. "Talk"

Encore

1. "What If"
2. "Swallowed In the Sea"
3. "In My Place"
4. "Fix You"

Cypress

Rolling that rock up the mountain.... :-)


View from the Hill - Horizon run (blue! :-) )

I've started a new undertaking: drive-by-pictures.

Camus and Sisyphus

"One must imagine Sisyphus happy".

I was reminded to look up Camus' discussion while listening to the Audiobook "The fabric of the Cosmos" where Brian Greene argues that an understanding of how the universe works does add to the meaning of life.

"When the images of earth cling too tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes too insistent, it happens that melancholy rises in man's heart: this is the rock's victory, this is the rock itself. The boundless grief is too heavy to bear" says Camus. According to Camus, only by submitting to the notion that all is absurd and that the search for higher meaning is meaningless are we to find happiness. There is only the rock and acceptance of the rock.
There is only me who happens to be here, who adds nothing to the world. Just an accidental pile of atoms.

A million atoms have to come together to form you, says Bill Bryson in "A short history of Nearly Everything". These atoms have no notion of being you, or being part of anything larger than themselves. In fact, these atoms are not alive. If you pulled them apart, one by one, you'd have a big pile of atoms. Nothing resembling you. This unique individual, this very special person you of whom there is only one. The gap that is left, is much larger than a pile of atoms could fill.

"God is not done with me yet" said the 80-year old man.

But what if...?
What if there was no light?
Nothing wrong, nothing right?

Silence is Golden

--Silence is Golden, Garbage

Don's sermon on Saturday (with that wonderful quote from Pattern Recognition about the soul lagging behind) talked about Silence. How weakness can be strength. How sharing our stories can build community and invite relationships. The first community of faith were sinners, were those who were weak and needed reassurance and love. The kingdom of God is there when we reach out.

On that topic - read in the Georgia Straight that Coldplay's song "Till Kingdom Come" was written for Johnny Cash....

Recipe for Happiness

So what's your favourite drink?

Arun: tazo chai creme frappicino. Diet pepsi/coke. Hurricane with Captain Morgan's dark rum, Mudslide (Kahlua, vodka, Baileys Irish Cream and ice cream)
Jeanne: tall Peppermint mocha (no whip)
Nick: medium roast black, no blend
Sandra: peppermint tea. Aged Single-Malt Irish Whiskey (check brand)
Gerry: Aged Irish Whiskey, any brand :-)
Nicole: root beer
Renbo: Taro bubble tea
Kev: whisky sour, and tanqueray ten w/ tonic and lime, lychee martini

Let me know. Let's drink.
And why do I make this list, Renbo? A totally aimless mindless enterprise, no reason and no purpose :-)

UBC-O celebration

Pictures were up on the intranet... Here we are :-)

Suzanne, Cath, Henriette, Wes, Kent, Doug, Ted


I like pictures. I like to take pictures. I hate being in pictures. Jane Urquart (in "the Underpainter") has one of the characters say that pictures are unnatural, as they freeze something that is meant to flow. It captures a view of the past I never saw.
Besides. I *know* I look better than that :-)

Cinnamon half sweet hold the whip

I scream down hill with the devil in full pursuit, heedless of the streaming snow cutting into my cheeks. The same snow that feathers down, under pressure becomes my adversary. I go so fast I can no longer see the snow or the turns. Mephisto whispers in my ear things that cannot be true yet cannot be denied and they echo, they echo.


Rain by another name is snow. Coffee by another name is a dolce-cinnamon-half-sweet-latte-skim-hundredandeightydegrees-hold-the whipcream-but-add-sprinkles. Maybe we make things too complicated. But Jeanne - my gut is too busy digesting! :-) Glad you enjoyed the Brian Adams/Daniel Powter concert yesterday.
You stand in the line just to hit a new low
You're faking a smile with the coffee to go
-- Daniel Powter

Blessing

Music, such a blessing.

Listening to: Sabbath Prayer from Fiddler on the Roof, For What You Dream Of (remix) -- Trainspotting, Dream Theatre, Our Lady Peace and of course, ColdPlay. Lots of Coldplay.
Can't wait till next week. What's another day. What's another week. An eternity in a mustardseed.

Dreaming...

Jacob's Dream, Arthur Boyd, 1947

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep–while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
-- A Dream Within A Dream, Edgar Alan Poe, 1827

We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
-- Martin Luther King, delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C

Happy Martin Luther King Day Arun. Enjoy your pizza.


Jacob's Dream, by Marc Chagall

Snow

Snow brings out the child in us.

Took my son up Cypress last week. Took my daughter up on Saturday. On Panorama, we have to take our skis of for a while and make a snow fort among the tiny trees. We dig and roll in the snow. She manages to sink into the snow to her chest and giggles all the way out. I have a moment of fear when I realize I might not be strong enough to pull her out. She wiggles all around on the chair lift to look behind, in front, underneath. We count fallen objects (latest score: 6 gloves, 1 package of Kleenex, 1 water bottle, 2 poles). My heart freezing, imagining a fallen child.

The open skies of childhood where anything is possible. Doris Lessing talks about the generation gap in her Sci-Fi books "The Canopus in Argos" - how the grown-ups try to tell the children about how precious and short life is... how not to make the same mistakes... and the children cannot hear. I think that to instill adult worry into children makes them see the dark clouds. It is up to us to bring the umbrella and shield them. The frozen fear in our heart is ours. Let the children be.

10,003 bears can't be wrong

I watch the tail lights glowing

So many loved ones lost

Caution

Things are closer than they seem

Life should be sweet as honey
10,003 bears can't be wrong

Discernment

The current issue of the Harvard Business Review looks at decision making. That most complicated, most reviled and most respected process in any organization. Those of us who fail to recognize when a decision is required do not function long in management. Sometimes making the wrong decision is better than making no decision at all. We all have worked for managers incapable of providing clear direction. For any of our actions to be efficient, we need a sense of direction, a sense of purpose. We need to see and desire the goal.

"Decisions are the coin of the realm of business" say Paul Rogers and Marcia Blenko "but even in highly respected companies, decisions can get stuck inside the organization like loose change." "When we make decisions, we're not always in charge." says Gardiner Morse, "one moment we hotheadedly let our emotions get the better of us; the next, we're paralyzed by uncertainty. Then we'll pull a brilliant decision out of thin air - and wonder how we did it." But he says neuroscientists tell us that "we have dog brains, basically, with human cortexes stuck on top".

I guess that explains why I feel like running :-)


Decisions pitch freedom and safety against each other. A decision, once made, closes off avenues and opens up new vistas.





As a "P" personality type, I don't like decisions. I don't like their finality. As a manager, I constantly make decisions and enjoy making them. What a funny bunch of contradictions we are. Luckily, the Scientific American tells me that being a mom has made me smarter. So I guess some of my decisions may be the right ones.

Discernment is the process of finding out what God desires of us. I listen for God's voice. I just hope there's no heavenly coin toss. Or worse. A decision by committee :-)

Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got.
-- Janis Joplin

Puzzle

Solving a Sudoku puzzle depends on two simple principles, that, rigorously applied, will solve any Sudoku:

• necessity: an entry has to necessarily be there to complete the series
• impossibility: an entry cannot possibly be there as it already exists in the series

Are you lost or incomplete?
Do you feel like a puzzle, you can't find your missing piece?
Tell me how do you feel?
-- Talk, Coldplay

Donna Nobis Pacem

"The great red hills stand desolate and the earth has torn away like flesh. The lightning flashes over them, the clouds pour down upon them, the dead streams come to life, full of the red blood of the earth. Down in the valleys, women scratch the soil that is left and the maize hardly reaches the height of a man. They are the valleys of old men and old women, of mothers and children. The men are away. The soil cannot keep them anymore."
-- Cry, the beloved country, Alan Paton -- about Zulu land

"Her voice calms me and her arms warm me and her smell lightens me and I can feel her heart beat and my heart slows and I stop shaking and the Fury melts into her safety and she holds me and she says.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay."
-- James Frey, A Million Pieces

Let there be light

Lux Arumque

Let there be light shining in the darkness.
Let there be open eyes with no fear.
Let there be trust.
Trust that there will be no more pain
Trust that there will be more love
Trust that there will be friends to catch us when we stumble
Trust that God will be there when we fall

Serenity Prayer

God give me the serenity to accept things I cannot change
Courage to change the things I can
And Wisdom to know the difference
-- Serenity Prayer

God give me style and give me grace
God put a smile upon my face
-- God Put a Smile, Coldplay

How could I let things
Get to me so bad?
Will you hold on to me
I am feeling frail
-- Dying in the Sun, Cranberries

Every day I hear a little scream inside
Every day that scream is getting louder
I just want to reach out and touch someone
'cause I find I need a friend in this dark hour
-- State of Mind, Fish


16.
Empty your mind of all thoughts. Let your heart be at peace. Watch the turmoil of beings but contemplate their return. Each separate being of the universe returns to the common source. Returning to the source is serenity. If you don't realize the source you stumble in confusion and sorrow. When you realize where you come from you naturally become tolerant, disinterested and amused. Kind hearted as a grandmother and dignified as a king. Immersed in the wonder of the Tao you can deal with whatever life brings you and when death comes you are ready.
-- Tao te Ching

Another Year Is Over. And What Have You Done

Vacation complete:

• Saw the new Narnia movie in SilverCity
  
• Had all Xmas presents wrapped well ahead of time
• Participated in the magical Xmas eve service at WVUC
  
• Received presents (weights for exercising, board games, books, and new System of A Down: hypnotize)

• Enjoyed the kids excitement pre- during- and post-present unwrapping

• Cooked a goose dinner (goose, roast potatoes, real apple sauce, carrots, beans, sprouts, flambe bananas)

• Completed several Sudoku puzzles

• Ate goose left-overs with our friends Dav and Lara
• Drove up to Whistler twice, by myself with the kids, and managed to find my way back to the village in time to pick them up from their ski/board-camp :-)

• Did my first blue runs and didn't fall
• Did my first blue runs somewhat in control and elegantly
• Assisted a poor Italian sod and his daughter who got themselves onto Orange Peel but didn't know how to ski and definitely didn't know how to stop
• Won and lost chess games with my son
• Got to lvl 35
• Watched Star Wars IV, V and VI on our big screen
• Saw the Picasso exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery with the kids
• Saw the Dinosaur exhibit and the Storyeum regular shows with family and Jeanne



• Admired the lights shining in the kids eyes at the Van Dusen gardens

• Enjoyed the Xmas train ride at Stanley Park
• Loved the Nutcracker ballet at Queen Elizabeth Theatre
  
• Ate too much over New Years with our friends but didn't offend the bringer of chocolates (as Kev said, or they may not repeat the performance :-))
  
• Walked to Cypress Falls park and back
• Read most of James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces"